Rachel Goodwin is a performer, teacher, and a resident of Ashmont Hill who is committed to the community’s cultural growth. She has been the Artistic Director and core member pianist of Ashmont Hill Chamber Music (www.ashmonthillchambermusic.org) since its founding in 1985. As Artistic Director, over the past season she designed and implemented an artist residency in two area high schools and a concert program entitled “Music, Poetry and American Identity.” The concert program was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts under the category “American Masterpieces Chamber Music” and featured the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger with poetry by Carl Sandburg. In 2002, Rachel Goodwin was named by the Boston Cultural Council as an Artist/Humanist Fellow in the City of Boston. The Boston Cultural Council chooses Artist/Humanist Fellows based on the quality of their creative work, their continuing dedication, their community building efforts, and their outreach to the public at large.
Ms. Goodwin has appeared in solo recitals and as a chamber musician throughout the eastern United States and California, including at New England Conservatory, the Mannes College of Music, the Gardner and DeCordova Museums, Harvard University, Longy School of Music, Weston Public Library, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of California at Riverside, WGBH, WCRB and WUMB radio, Boston's First Night Celebration, and as a concerto soloist with the Brookline Symphony Orchestra. She has participated in summer music festivals at Ernen Musikdorf (Switzerland), Aspen, the Banff Centre, and New College. Rachel Goodwin recently joined the piano faculty at the College of the Holy Cross, and has served as a chamber music coach for the New England Conservatory's Schools of Preparatory and Continuing Education. She has presented lecture-recitals on works of Bartók and Ravel for the Longy School of Music’s graduate seminar in analysis and performance, a masterclass for the Longy’s Preparatory Division Performance Hour, and for several years gave annual lectures for Longy's College Division piano pedagogy class on the integration of music theory into piano teaching. She has also served as a member of the Board of the New England Piano Teacher's Association from 2007-2009. Active as a music theorist as well as a performer, Ms. Goodwin has presented a lecture-recital on Bartók that was the featured event at a joint meeting of two music theory societies.
Ms. Goodwin holds a M.M. (with honors) from the New England Conservatory and a Diploma in Piano Performance from the Mannes College of Music in New York. Her piano teachers include Edith Oppens, Barbara Shearer and Alexander Lieberman, and she has performed extensively in master classes for Karl Ulrich Schnabel and György Sebök. Her chamber music coaches have included Eugene Lehner, Luis Battle, John Graham and Lorand Fenyves. Ms. Goodwin maintains an active independent studio with studio locations in Ashmont Hill and Cambridge.